Ghostcrawler

You know that part at the end of raid night when the final boss is dead and you’re done handing out loot and everyone kind of goes their separate ways? Yeah, this is one of those times.

We just came off of a great BlizzCon. We had so many different games to talk about, and we were thrilled at the reception of Warlords of Draenor. It was great to meet or reconnect with so many of you. I love BlizzCon dearly, which makes it so hard to tell you that this will be my last one, or at least my last one up on stage. An opportunity has come my way, and I have made the very tough decision to move on from Blizzard.

I wanted to thank all of you for being a part of this grand quest. I have said a hundred times that having passionate gamers, including the angry ones, is a far better place to be than having a community that doesn’t care. You all care. Like us, you want the game to be the best that it can be. So I ask you to keep on providing your feedback. I promise (and I rarely promise!) that the developers care very much about what you have to say.

I’ll be out there, and I can’t imagine it will be that hard to find me.

Hugs,Ghostcrawler

P.S. No, you can’t have a pony. Or a moose. Or a mantis shrimp. Or a tardigrade. Or a crab. Keep trying though.

You can also visit a zone's page now, like Ashenvale, to hear all the music associated with it.

Quest Tracking Improvements

We've added a new way for players to see if they've completed certain quests or not. You can look up a character's progress on quest pages now!

All you have to do is import a Battle.net Character via the Profiler, and then go to you Profiles tab on your UserPage and click on the heart icon to the left of one of your profiles to "pin" it.

If you visit any quest page, or browse a bunch of quests in search results, you'll see if you've completed quests for that pinned character in the Completion column for search results, or under Quick Facts on individual pages. Tooltips will even show which character has completed a quest!

You can track quests for multiple characters at once too--just select several characters from your Profiles tab.

Guide Improvements

A lot of Wowhead users have created awesome guides, and we've improved our guide section to showcase them better:

You can see popular Wowhead and user-created guides on relevant database pages--like the Pilgrim's Bounty guide now shows up on recipe and food pages with a special graphic.

The main guides page has a new landing page, featuring guide categories and recent guides.

Featured guides with images now appear at the top of search results, and we are always evaluating and adding guides to this list. Feel free to submit one!

We've improved how guides are styled so they look more polished like Wowhead News, and added a sidebar showing similar guides, recent guides, popular guides, and other guides by an author. If you like the old layout, you can click on an arrow to hide the sidebar as well.

Talk Azeroth Episode 19: Garrisons

We've got a new episode of Talk Azeroth with Olivia--her major topic this week is Garrisons! She covers a lot of viewer questions from last week, including whether Garrisons should have been guild content (7:27), if offline play is a good or a bad thing (11.15), and whether Garrisons should be character specific or account-wide (19.10). For more details on Garrisons, check out our Warlords of Draenor BlizzCon guide.

Patch 5.4.2 PTR

Phases:

Changes:

Karazhan RestorationMedivh's Big Birthday Bash:

Mails:

New:

Your recruited friend!:Great news! Your recruited friend logged in during your absence with a character named %s on the realm named %s. Add this character to your friend list to see them next time they log in. Have fun, and happy hunting

Your recruited friend!:Great news! Your recruited friend logged in during your absence with a character named %s. Add this character to your friend list to see them next time they log in. Have fun, and happy hunting

Globalstrings:

New:

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Pilgrim's Bounty is here and it's time to reflect on your journeys across Azeroth, share plentiful food, and exchange stories with friends. Throughout this holiday, you can partake in feasts near major towns by sitting at a bountiful table and enjoying the foods you find there.

Due to its focus on food, this holiday is especially well-known for being a quick and easy way to level up cooking. However, with how easy cooking is to level in Mists of Pandaria, it's somewhat outshined by the expansion although it's still useful if getting to Pandaria is hard on a low-level alt. Still, players can purchase a Bountiful Cookbook, which grant easy skill-ups and foods such as Pumpkin Pie. Plus, The Spirit of Sharing can help you out with all the Mists of Pandaria rep grinds since it's a 10% reputation boost.

This holiday lasts from November 25 at 11:00 AM to December 2 10:00 AM.

Bountiful Tables

The main Pilgrim's Bounty festivities take place at bountiful tables which can be found located throughout many zones in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Various seasonal vendors and questgivers surround the major cities' tables, offering special cooking ingredients and related daily quests.

Bountiful tables can be found at the following locations:

Horde Locations

Major cities: Orgrimmar, Silvermoon City, Thunder Bluff, Undercity

Minor towns: All minor towns with innkeepers.

Alliance Locations

Major cities: Darnassus, Exodar, Ironforge, Stormwind City

Minor towns: All minor towns with innkeepers.

Neutral Locations

Minor towns: Light's Hope Chapel, Ruins of Thaurissan

At any of these locations, you will find that bountiful tables have been loaded with food. The tables located in major cities will be surrounded by vendors, cooking trainers, and questgivers while the ones located in minor towns will have only a hostess to greet you. You can sit and eat at any table--even those located in the opposing faction's city/town. In fact, there's even an achievement for doing just that!

A bountiful table features five different chairs, one for each different food that is available in that spot. Each chair is labeled for the associated food, and you will be able to eat/pass as much of it as possible for as long as you are seated. Each table features The Cranberry Chair, The Pie Chair, The Sweet Potato Chair, The Stuffing Chair, and (of course) The Turkey Chair. Unlike normal chairs, the bountiful table's chairs function similar to vehicles and feature their own unique abilities that will replace your main action bar upon being seated.

Players will be given options to eat or pass the delicious foods provided at their seat.

These abilities are necessary not only for eating to obtain the respective food's buff (you must eat five helpings of a single food to gain its buff), but also to pass the foods required for Sharing is Caring and to accidentally "throw" the food required for "FOOD FIGHT!".

If you eat five helpings of each of the available foods at a bountiful table, you will gain the The Spirit of Sharing buff which grants a 10% increase in reputation gain for an hour, and can be regained simply by visiting a table and sampling all five foods again. If seated players pass food to each other, obtaining this buff shouldn't take long at all--so don't forget to share!

Seasonal Items

The ingredients required for cooking the various Pilgrim's Bounty recipes are available only from special seasonal vendors or from mobs that will not spawn outside of the season.

It's worth noting that the recipes will count towards the various recipe achievements (such as Chef de Cuisine). If you want a guide that focuses specifically on the related recipe achievements, user Patrick3876 made an excellent one for Wowhead.

The following items can be purchased from seasonal vendors and used to cook the new recipes, and some can only be purchased in a specific zone:

Upon completing the quest chain ending with Slow-roasted Turkey (Alliance version), you will receive a Turkey Caller. This fun little item can be used to call a Wild Turkey to your side (which can then be killed for Wild Turkey). This is not to be confused with the non-combat pet you can obtain by completing all of the Pilgrim's Bounty achievements and will expire when the event has ended.

There are also few seasonal items that are available as rewards from the various cooking daily quests (see quest section below for more details). You will have your choice of any one reward for completing a daily quest, so you will be able to collect all of the different armor rewards after completing five daily quests. You will then need to complete ten more daily quests in order to get enough Turkey Shooter to transform each different race of rogue for Turkey Lurkey.

You will need to complete at least twelve daily quests in order to obtain enough items to complete various achievements (a Pilgrim's Hat, your choice of chestpiece, and the 10 Turkey Shooter). The following items are awarded from the Pilgrim's Bounty daily quests:

Stay away from campfires, or else the turkey will sense its destiny, run towards it, and turn into a roast turkey!

Seasonal Recipes

With the main focus of the Pilgrim's Bounty event being food, you had better believe there's new Cooking recipes! Seasonal recipes have been added and players can purchase a Bountiful Cookbook (Alliance version) containing all five of their faction's recipes for a mere from any Pilgrim's Bounty Vendor!

It is worth mentioning that learning and cooking these seasonal recipes provides one of the easiest and fastest methods of leveling cooking from at least 1-300 skill using only seasonal, vendor-purchased ingredients, so if your character has no cooking skill now is the perfect time to start.

It is also worth mentioning that one of the recipes (Spice Bread Stuffing / Spice Bread Stuffing) requires Spice Bread, which is created by another cooking recipe unrelated to the holiday. This recipe, Spice Bread, can be trained from pretty much any Cooking Trainer and requires only 1 point in Cooking skill, making it a great leveling recipe as well.

Quests

Pilgrim's Bounty features a number of new cooking-oriented quests, most of which have daily quest versions as well.

You will need at least 280 Cooking skill in order to be able to cook all of the new seasonal recipes, though the recipes have varying skill levels so if you are not interested in completing everything there will definitely be a recipe you will be able to cook for at least one daily quest, provided you have any Cooking skill at all.

The recipes required for these quests can be learned from a Pilgrim's Bounty Cooking Trainer located near the major cities' Bountiful Tables.

Horde Quests

Pilgrim's BountyStart: Commoners located inside major cities.End:Miles StandishThis is simply a breadcrumb quest that leads you to out to the Pilgrim's Bounty celebrations in Undercity's courtyard, the Ruins of Lordaeron, and is not necessary to be completed in order to obtain the other quests. Simply head out that way and talk to Miles Standish to complete.

Daily QuestsEach of the cooking daily quests are fairly straightforward - simply get the required food, and bring it to the designated person - so they shouldn't need extremely detailed descriptions. A book containing all of the new recipes can be purchased from a Pilgrim's Bounty Vendor located near the major cities' Bountiful Tables. Please refer to the recipes section above for detailed ingredients.

Alliance Quests

Pilgrim's BountyStart: Commoners, probably.End:Gregory TaborThis is simply a breadcrumb quest that leads you to out to the Pilgrim's Bounty celebrations at the gates of Stormwind City, and is not necessary to be completed in order to obtain the other quests. Simply head out that way and talk to Gregory Tabor to complete.

Daily QuestsEach of the cooking daily quests are fairly straightforward - simply get the required food, and bring it to the designated person - so they shouldn't need extremely detailed descriptions. A book containing all of the new recipes can be purchased from a Pilgrim's Bounty Vendor located near the major cities' Bountiful Tables. Please refer to the recipes section above for detailed ingredients.

Achievements

Pilgrim's Bounty features nine unique achievements that can be earned! While it is definitely worth noting that the Pilgrim meta-achievement is not required for What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been, this achievement awards not only a player title but a battle pet as well!

That's right, complete all of the Pilgrim's Bounty achievements and your character will gain the title 'the Pilgrim' and receive a Plump Turkey pet! This pet is not cageable, so you can't find it on the AH.

PilgrimThis achievement requires you to complete ALL of the Pilgrim's Bounty achievements, and will reward you with an in-game title - the Pilgrim! You will also receive a companion, the Plump Turkey! Once again worth mentioning, this holiday and its related achievements are not required for What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been.

"FOOD FIGHT!"Bounce food off a fellow feaster's head at a Bountiful Table.For this achievement, you must seat yourself at one of the Bountiful Tables (locations can be found above) and share food until you "miss" and end up bouncing the food off another player's head! Players are reporting that this will happen when the player the food was getting passed to already had a maximum of the food, so just sit at any chair and pass food between players until you have earned this achievement.

Now We're Cookin' or Now We're Cookin'Cook up one of every Pilgrim's Bounty dish.For this achievement, you must cook one of each of the listed Pilgrim's Bounty dishes. These recipes can be learned from Miles Standish or Gregory Tabor and the reagents to cook these new recipes can be purchased from any Pilgrim's Bounty Vendor. You will need at least 280 Cooking Skill to cook all five dishes.

Pilgrim's Paunch or Pilgrim's PaunchAcquire The Spirit of Sharing from a complete Bountiful Table feast at every Horde or Alliance capital.For this achievement, you must have a complete meal at each major city's Bountiful Table, which means sitting in each of the five chairs to eat its provided dish. When you have sampled five helpings of each of the foods the table provides, you will gain the The Spirit of Sharing buff which increases your reputation gain by 10% for an hour. Simply travel to each of your faction's four major cities and sample five helpings of each of the five foods at its table to gain the buff.

Pilgrim's Peril or Pilgrim's PerilWhile wearing either a Pilgrim's Dress, Pilgrim's Robe, or Pilgrim's Attire, take a seat at each enemy capital's Bountiful Table.This achievement requires you to obtain an article of Pilgrim clothing from one of the Pilgrim's Bounty daily quests (see above) and wear it as you visit (and somehow manage to seat yourself at) the Bountiful Tables in your opposing faction's major cities. This achievement, similar to the Midsummer fire-stealing quests, may prove to be a huge pain on heavily populated servers, so it may be best to try this one during your server's "off-hours" to avoid PVP complications.

Pilgrim's Progress or Pilgrim's ProgressComplete each of the Pilgrim's Bounty dailies.For this achievement, you must complete each Pilgrim's Bounty daily quest. You can get each of the five daily quests from their respective questgivers at your faction's classic major cities' Pilgrim's Bounty camps, and all five are available to complete every day. Keep in mind that you don't have to cook for these dailies--you simply have to turn in the food.

Sharing is CaringPass one of every dish at a Bountiful Table.For this achievement, just sit at a Bountiful Table in each of the different chairs and pass the food to another seated player. The table chairs work similar to a vehicle, so you will have new abilities on your action bar to eat, pass, etc. Sit at all five chairs and pass it's offered dish to earn the achievement! And remember - no hoarding the pie chair! We all like pie!

Terokkar Turkey TimeDefeat Talon King Ikiss while wearing a Pilgrim's Hat and either a Pilgrim's Dress, Robe, or Attire.For this achievement you will need to first obtain both a Pilgrim's Hat and a seasonal chestpiece from the Pilgrim's Bounty daily quests. You must then head out to Terokkar Forest's Auchindoun, and venture into Sethekk Halls to defeat Talon King Ikiss while wearing your seasonal attire. This can be completed on either Normal or Heroic difficulty, in case you were interested in having a chance at killing Anzu! Please note that you will, of course, have to be high enough level to zone into Sethekk Halls (level 63) to complete this achievement.

The TurkinatorHunt enough Wild Turkeys quickly enough to gain Turkey Triumph.This achievement requires you to kill 40 Wild Turkey, no more than 30 seconds apart per kill, until you have obtained Turkey Triumph! Every 10 kills, you'll get a different animatino above your head--Turkey Hunter, Turkey Domination, Turkey Slaughter, and finally Turkey Triumph.

Wild Turkey, neutral critters, can be found in Tirisfal Glades or Elwynn Forest, and you can choose to kill them in either zone, though I don't think subjecting yourself to PVP while trying to accumulate a stacking kill count is a very good idea. Expect this achievement to be a complete pain during your server's peak hours, so this may end up being another one to save till the wee hours of the morning!

Turkey LurkeyBlast those dirty, sneaking Rogues with your Turkey Shooter.This achievement requires you to use your trusty Turkey Shooter on a Rogue player of each race (save Pandaren) - transforming them into a turkey! Poor rogues! A Turkey Shooter can be obtained from Pilgrim's Bounty daily quests, and can be used anywhere, but it is consumed after a single use so you will need to keep doing dailies in order to complete the achievement--10 dailies total. If you shoot a player who has the buff and is in a vehicle, you will get an error message.

World of Warcraft turns 9 today, and in addition to WoW's 9th Anniversary going on in-game (read more here), there's a special event on Twitch.tv starting at noon PST celebrating the game! Tune in with popular gaming host Soe Gschwind-Penski and members of <Paragon> for prizes, a trip down nostalgia lane, and a look at some of the exciting features in Warlords of Draenor.

You can purchase the Alterac Brew-Pup and Enchanted Fey Dragon for $30 total here. For every Alterac Brew Pup and Enchanted Fey Dragon bundle or individual Alterac Brew Pup purchased now through December 31, 2013, Blizzard will donate $5 to Make-A-Wish®.

You can also buy them individually: the Brew Pup for $10 here and the mount for $25 here.

Naturally this means we have some to giveaway--both store additions are so cute, we're giving away both!

This mount changes color--going between blue, yellow, and red. As an added bonus, it scales based on your riding level and functions as a ground mount in no-fly zones.

Click the images below to check out the different colors in our 3D Modelviewer!

Blizzard

Entrusted with protecting the Emerald Dream, the Enchanted Fey Dragon absorbs magic and exudes style—with a chroma-shifting twist. Saddle up on one of these iridescent sprites and enjoy the instant street (and sky) cred that comes with being one of the last bastions of cool.

Blizzard

Descended from a long pedigree of rescue hounds, the Alterac Brew Pup has a nose for finding travelers in distress in the high altitudes of the Alterac Mountains. However, it’s the massive pup’s ability to reignite your soul with its “warm spirits” on a cold that night that will make this furry friend your most trusted and treasured companion.

WoW Source: New Forsaken Models

Morgan Webb sits down with Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas, Senior Art Director Chris Robinson, and Game Director Tom Chilton to talk about the Warlords of Draenor reveal at BlizzCon 2013, and an exclusive first look at the new female Forsaken model (around 13 min in).

Cross-Realm Raid Browser on PTR

Watcher

Did you know that WoW includes a raid browser to assist with finding or forming groups? Don't worry, neither do most people. But it exists, and as we work towards revamping and expanding this feature for Warlords, we figured that we could also improve the usefulness of the existing functionality in the short-term.

If you click the "Other Raids" button in the social Raid tab, you'll see a list of raids. For 5.4.2, we've added two new categories, Mists of Pandaria Raid (Flex) and World Boss, which are specially enabled to function cross-realm. If you're looking to join a group for these activities, you can check off the appropriate fields and click "List My Name" below, and you'll put yourself into the LFG pool for those activities. For these specific activities, this pool will function cross-realm.

If you click over to the "Browse" tab on the right side of the screen, and select one of these activities from the drop-down list, you'll see a list of players across all servers who are looking to join groups for that activity.

Please give this a try on the PTR, and report any feedback or bugs you encounter. Thanks!

Talk Azeroth With Olivia--BlizzCon Edition

Olivia's back after the roof blew off her studio, with a Talk Azeroth focusing on one of the biggest pieces of news to come out of BlizzCon, the changes in raid sizes. She's wondering just exactly what the impact will be on different guilds, from LFR right up to the controversial new Mythic raiding mode, as well as talking through a few of your responses to Talk Azeroth 17, and asking for your questions and views on Garrisons.

Warlords of Draenor: Itemization Changes and New Stats

Blizzard devs have been very active on Twitter discussing item and stat changes in Warlords of Draenor. You can learn about the entire itemization preview at BlizzCon on our Warlords of Draenor Guide, or check out the clarifications below. Most of these details were covered at BlizzCon, but it's easy to forget some details with so much new information!

Spirit (healers) and armor (tanks) will only appear on accessory slots, weapons, and gems, not main slots like helms. Accessory items will most likely just have secondary stats.

Only main armor pieces like helms will swap their primary stats in WoD--there's no "spirit plate" or "intellect plate" anymore--but secondary stats remain. So if you swap from Protection to Holy, the strength will change to intellect, but any mastery/haste will remain.

Tertiary stats are also a new type of stat coming in Warlords of Draenor--boring stats like hit and expertise are gone, replaced by interesting stats like Movement Speed and Lifesteal which are similar to interesting procs on Siege of Orgrimmar trinkets. A lot of Multistrike details were answered yesterday as well. Some of these new interesting stats may be considered secondary ones as well--guaranteed to be on gear, instead of tertiary stats, which are bonus additional stats that aren't a guarantee.

Q: A little confused what tanks will gear for on normal items? Mastery/Haste?A: @AlexEvangelou Yes, and even crit and other stats. (Source)

Q: The new item system (stats prop. for your spec) will affect all items (neck, ring...) or just the set (chest, helm..)?A: @_ivansc Only the main armor pieces (head etc.) will swap primary stats. That is true of tier sets and off-piece items. (Source)@_ivansc Jewelry etc. likely won't ever have primary stats. They may have attack power, but mostly secondary stats. (Source)

@AdamHolisky Yes. Multistrike is a chance on hits/crits only, not misses/avoids. (Source)

@VerainOfUrsin No; additional Multistrike and Cleave hits are considered procs, so can't proc more things. But, DPoison could Multistrike. (Source)

@IshayuG While I don't have any specifics to announce, rest assured that impact on PvP burst is definitely something that we're considering. (Source)

Q: Which means with Overload & Echo of the Elements you can get 6-12 hits per cast?A: @BinksPublicFeed Yes, theoretically, though that potential may be too much RNG/burst, so we may decide to adjust something in that picture. (Source)

Q: This may sound silly, but would multi-strike work for tank abilities, like a "double block"? Or is it cleave-like only?A: @Pocky469 No; just like your Shield Block cannot 'crit', it also cannot Multistrike or Cleave. (Source)

Q: if I have 10% Amplify haste, and 1000 haste rating on my gear, I have 1100 haste rating from gear? Round numbers for ease math.A: @Miatog Amplify isn't stat specific. If you have 10% Amplify, and 1000 Haste (rating) on gear, you get 1100 Haste (rating) from gear. (Source)